On 25 November 2016, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO),
in cooperation with the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), convened a
side-event to the 9th Session of the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues.
Entitled "Forgotten Crises, Forgotten Victims: Minorities and Humanitarian
Challenges", the event brought together representatives of minority groups,
whose voice is rarely heard in the international media, to shed a light on their
struggles and the humanitarian crises they are facing today.

In his opening remarks,
Marino Busdachin, General
Secretary of UNPO, shed a light
on the fact that since the
independence of East Timor, the
UN has failed to advance the
fulfilment of the right of
self-determination, leaving
minorities all over the world on
the fringes of the international
community. Hanno Schedler
of the Society for Threatened
Peoples expanded on this by
highlighting the importance of
this year’s topic. The
introductory remarks also
brought attention to the
frequent interruptions of
statements by UN Members States,
which attempted to stop several
representatives from completing
their speeches.

The first
speaker, Abdirahman Mahdi,
representative of the Ogaden
People’s Rights Organisation (OPRO),
began by underlining the issue
of multinational companies
exploiting land in Ogaden for
oil exploration, leading to
extensive environmental
degradation, cyclical man-made
droughts and mass displacement.
He stressed that "every area in
Ogaden is a plot for sale to
international companies",
leading to rampant human rights
violations with Ethiopian
paramilitary forces burning
villages to clear the land.

This was then followed by
Comrade Sunny Ofehe, founder
and executive director of the
Hope for Niger Delta Campaign,
highlighting how multinational
companies are also purchasing
Ogoni land in Nigeria, causing
widespread oil pollution. Ofehe
also pointed out that peaceful
Ogoni protests were repressed
with military force, underlining
that we need to work together to
raise awareness of peoples
"forgotten by their own
governments and multinational
companies, and to call for an
end to impunity for violence
against peaceful protesters".

Sheyma Silavi,
representative of the Ahwaz
Human Rights Organization (AHRO),
emphasised how environmental
crises are also an issue for
minorities in the Middle East,
especially for the Ahwaz
minority in Iran. Iran’s
construction of dams diverts
water to central areas leaving
the Ahwazi community with a lack
of water, which is then polluted
by the oil exploration. This
severely impacts the health of
local inhabitants, who are then
consequently admitted to
hospital and are faced with a
lack of medical support, as the
province is one of the most
improvised provinces although it
produces up to 90 percent of
Iran's oil.

Moreover, Abidine Merzough
of IRA-Mauritania, illustrated
the situation of the Haratin
community in the Islamic
Republic of Mauritania, where
slavery remains a widespread
practice. Mr Merzough
highlighted how anyone
protesting against slavery in
Mauritania is soon imprisoned,
with 16 members of IRA being
arrested in 2016 alone.

Dolkun Isa, executive
Chairman of the World Uyghur
Congress, gave an overview of
the plight of the Uyghur
community of East Turkestan in
China, who for 67 years now are
subject to systematic
assimilation policies and human
rights violations. Mr Isa
focussed on Uyghur refugees, who
after fleeing the persecution
they faced in East Turkestan are
finding themselves in
life-threatening conditions in
detention centres and risk being
deported back to China.

Furthermore, Enghebatu
Togochog, director of the
Southern Mongolian Human Rights
Information Center (SMHRIC)
clarified how Southern
Mongolians have also been
subjected to repression at the
hands of the Chinese government.
Mr Togochog shed a light on how
the land reforms of the 1950s
still impact Southern Mongolians
today, with large scale
immigration, intensive farming
and land-grabbing leading to
environmental degradation and an
increasing number of internally
displaced peoples.

Monireh
Shirani, director of the
Balochistan Human Rights Group,
focussed her intervention on the
impact of the death penalty on
the livelihood of the Baloch
community in Iran. Ms Shirani
remarked how "when it comes to
death penalty and executions we
are overrepresented",
underlining the issue of secret
executions in Iran. Moreover,
she highlighted how Baloch
prisoners are being moved, so
that they cannot be kept track
of, how some villages in
Balochistan have seen their
entire male population executed,
and how this all points to the
dire need for this issue to be
perceived as a humanitarian
crisis by the international
community.

Krishna
Chakma, executive director
of the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Foundation Inc., explained the
history of the indigenous Jumma
peoples of the Chittagong Hill
Tracts. Chakma highlighted that
despite the long history of
their movement for
self-determination, they are
still living under military rule
and facing significant problems
of land-grabbing and
displacement.

Before officially closing the
conference, Dr Fiona
McConnell of Oxford
University and the Tibet Justice
Center, presented a conference
declaration. The full
declaration can be found below:

We have heard excellent
presentations in this side event
on humanitarian crises affecting
minority communities. We have
heard detailed information from
experts who know what the
reality is on the ground in
these regions and communities.
We’ve been presented with
detailed statistics, seen
photographic and video
documentation and heard
first-hand accounts of mass
displacement, state intimidation
and violence, and environmental
disasters.

A wide range of contexts and
regions have brought together in
this event. But there two key
common themes which it is
important to highlight. First
these are all minority
communities that are
disproportionally affected by
complex and long standing
conflicts and by natural
disasters. As such, this event
has provided concrete evidence
behind Draft recommendation
paragraph 7 which states that
‘minorities may suffer harsher
consequences of conflict or
disasters because of a
pre-existing precarious social
and economic position’. As a
community of civil society
actors and experts we urge the
Forum on Minority Issues to
follow up on this issue with
relevant UN institutions and
mechanisms, with the urgency
that is so evidently needed.

Second these are all cases
that are under-reported.
International Media focuses
attention only on a handful of
cases of humanitarian crises,
and even then they rarely focus
how these crises affect minority
groups. The communities and
situations that have been
discussed here today are ones
that have been ongoing for
decades, and have been
repeatedly neglected by
mainstream international media.
So again, as a community of
civil society actors and experts
we call for raising the profile
of minority communities in
situations of humanitarian
crises in all regions and
contexts with the hope that by
turning a spotlight on these
issues, perpetrators of
discrimination against
minorities can be brought to
justice.

The well-achieved goal of
this side-event, was to raise
awareness for minorities in
humanitarian challenges largely
overlooked by the international
community. In the context of the
9th session of the UN Forum on
Minority Issues, an event whose
main aim is to provide a
platform for minorities around
the world and allow their case
to be heard, the event sought to
give a voice to minorities
systematically silenced in the
international arena by
governments and international
actors implicated in the
humanitarian challenges they are
facing. The event
concluded by urging the
participants to continue raising
awareness for these victims of
forgotten crises, calling on
political and legislative
influencers to take action for
their protection.